


Give Yourself to Another Life

by TUNiU



Series: Recovery is a Spiral [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Clone Blues, Fluff and Angst, M/M, post resurrection blues, violence against things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: When Hugh gets brought back from the Mycelial Realm, he  goes through some existential angst. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers when he knows his corpse is still floating through space.
Relationships: Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets
Series: Recovery is a Spiral [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018074
Kudos: 14





	Give Yourself to Another Life

Hugh lay in bed. His own bed with Paul. Not the bed he’d made of forest debris and rocks. The sheets were smooth and soft. He pushed his face into the pillow to feel its compression against his skin. Beside him Paul was asleep. They’d started the night holding each other tight but had slowly drifted apart in their sleep. This was their first night in bed together since Hugh had come back from the Mycelial Realm. The many days in sickbay didn’t count. Hugh had spent all that time undergoing every test known to science to prove that he was 1) okay, 2) perfectly healthy, and 3) actually Hugh Culber. There hadn’t been room on the biobed for Paul to lay beside him holding him. Not that they hadn’t tried. Paul had ended up sitting on a chair next to Hugh’s bed, holding his hand almost the entire time. There was a lot of depression, and staring, and eventually minute smiling, and crying on both their parts during those days and Hugh believed there would be a lot more in the future. 

The stars shone through the window above their bed in their quarters. Hugh appreciated the sight. The sky had been so different in that other place. Everything had been different. Every second had been a fight for survival. To what end, Hugh hadn’t known: living had been its own purpose. He just had to stay alive even as the air around him had tried to digest his body. It had been so cold there. And laying here with Paul was so warm. He never wanted to leave.

The alarm eventually chimed and Paul woke up. Hugh watched Paul squeeze his still shut eyes. He took a few deep breaths. Then he opened his eyes, stared at Hugh and startled back in abject shock.

“Hi,” Paul said shakily.

“Hey,” Hugh replied.

Tears welled up in Paul’s eyes. “I forgot,” he whispered.

Hugh scooted over in the bed so that he could wrap his arm around Paul. He pressed his head against Paul’s gently rubbing their noses together.

“Let me stay here with you forever,” Paul said.

“You have to get up eventually,” Hugh reluctantly disputed the request. Paul had a shift today, after Captain Pike had let him take those days off sitting with Hugh in sickbay. But the ship still needed massive repairs from it’s orthogonal entrance into the mycelial realm, and Paul was needed as chief engineer. 

Paul shook his head back and forth, knocking their noses back and forth.“Nnnnnnn.”

“I don’t think keeping my husband trapped in bed will make a good first impression on our new captain.”

“It’ll make a good impression on me.”

Hugh patted his ass. “Someone has to earn the bacon until I’m cleared for duty.”

“We’re a cashless society,” he grumbled even as the computer alarm bleeped again. “Seriously, will you be okay?” he asked as he rolled out of bed. He gathered up his uniform and Hugh watched Paul until he was lost to sight within the bathroom. “I’ll be fine. I’ll probably just wander the ship, see what’s changed,” he said with a bravado he didn’t quite feel yet.

The sonic shower turned on and then turned off. Paul exited the bathroom swinging his second jacket sleeve onto his arm. He zipped it up over his shirt then he bent down over the bed. He propped himself up on one arm, hovering over Hugh. “I’ll be back for lunch,” he said, kissing him.

“You take lunch now, there’s a change,” he teased.

“I’ll be back for lunch,” Paul repeated, seriously.

Hugh’s smile fell slightly. Paul kissed him again. And again. He kissed him until he was laying flat atop Hugh, his hands either side of his face.

The computer bleeped. 

Paul froze with his eyes closed. He breathed deeply and then stood up. He straightened his uniform and his hair, but there was no fixing that happy glow in his face. He looked at Hugh. And then continued looking at Hugh.

“You have to go,” Hugh said.

“I can’t.”

“The faster you fix the ship, the faster you can come back.”   
“Alternatively, I could let everyone else fix the ship and just stay here with you.”   
“Paul.”

“I can’t.”

“Paul.”

“Okay.”

“Paul!”

“I’m going, I swear.”

“Do I need to get Cadet Tilly to drag you out of here?”

“Actually, she’s an Ensign now.”

“PAUL!”

“Yeah, okay.” Paul leapt downward and kissed Hugh gently on the lips once more before leaving their quarters. The doors swished shut behind him. Hugh was now alone.

* * *

Hugh spent a long while in bed. Occasionally his bladder told him he had to pee, but he ignored it in favor of luxuriating between the sheets. Time passed. Eventually, he went to the bathroom but then immediately slid back into bed. He took Paul’s pillow and laid it atop his stomach under the sheets. He held it tight. The weight was comforting but not enough. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent Paul to work. They could right now be laying in bed, holding each other. The sheets were soft. The pillow was soft. He squished his face between the layers of softness until only his nose protruded out into the air. He spent a long while just floating in softness, fading in and out of awareness, almost, but not quite, sleeping.

The ephemeral feeling Hugh was chasing slowly ebbed further and further out of his grasp, until he was just a man laying in bed under a pillow. He sat up, disgruntled at being awake, and disgruntled that there was no one to share his disgruntlement with because he had sent Paul to work, stupid him.

He couldn’t stay in bed forever, and their quarters, even as large as they were, did not hold much entertainment opportunities. If Hugh wanted something to do, he would have to leave the room and go out into the ship proper. And he couldn’t do that in his pajamas.  It took several minutes of trying to convince himself to get out of bed, before he actually stood up and walked to the small closet. 

His uniform was gone. His white jacket, white pants, and dark boots were missing. There were however several casual ensembles hanging next to Paul’s clothes.  The replicator gave him a little bit of trouble. Since Hugh’s systems access hadn’t yet been restored, he didn’t have an account of replicator credits. He had to use Paul’s codes to turn it on. Once the selection menu appeared, he instructed the replicator to make him a new uniform. While the fabric was materializing into existence, Hugh swapped his pajamas for a dark polo shirt and jeans.

The replicator drawer unfolded, presenting him with a neatly folded uniform. The jacket lay atop the shirt and pants. Hugh hung the garments up, next to Paul’s clothes, so that they made a white line between the two halves of the small closet. He slid some socks onto his feet and strapped on the uniform boots. It would be best to break in the new shoes now, instead of when he was trapped on a long shift.

He never wore his wedding ring on duty. He didn’t want it getting dirty with blood and viscera, or getting lost while sanitizing for surgery. But he was off duty for the next however long, and he felt he needed the heavy weight of metal against his finger, as a comfort. When he opened the drawer of his nightstand the ring wasn’t there.

He moved around the various detritus of a life spent on a ship. There was a communicator, a spare badge, a couple of padds, and all the tiny little pieces of dirt and plastic that always seemed to accumulate in drawer corners even on a spaceship. But there was no ring. Hugh sat on the bed and flung himself over to Paul’s side. He opened the drawer of that nightstand. There was the same type of debris: the padds more mycology related than medically so, but again, no ring.

He stood up and ripped open the door of the closet. Each piece of his clothing was meticulously inspected. He checked pockets and rolled up cuffs, of both his and Paul’s clothing. He unrolled socks, and unfolded boxers. He tapped shoes upside down.

He needed his wedding ring.

He went back to the clothing, and obsessively checked even the pockets of the uniform he’d just replicated.

* * *

Lunch arrived, and with it Paul. He took one step into their quarters and stopped. “Hugh?” he asked in alarm. 

Hugh sat at the table, running a small regenerator over his bloody knuckles. The room was a mess. Everything that could be taken apart had been. Everything that couldn’t be taken apart had been broken apart. The mattress was on the floor, stripped of sheets. The closet was empty, with clothing on the floor.

Hugh took a deep breath. Then another. He wasn’t angry anymore. That had faded away once he saw the destruction he’d caused. Now he was abjectly confused and scared. “I couldn’t find my ring,” he admitted. “And then I realized.”

Paul took several steps into the room. The door swished shut behind him. “Hugh?” he asked gently.

“You buried me in space. My ring is on my body, in a casket,” he waved his hand at the window, indicating the vastness of space beyond the ship. “Somewhere out there.” he squeezed his newly repaired knuckles so hard his hands turned red. “If my body is out there, then who am I in here?”

“You’re Hugh Culber.”

“Then who was he?”

Paul said nothing. There was nothing to say. There was no explanation to give. Through some quirk of quantum physics Hugh had been copied or transferred from one body to another. Yet without an in-depth scan of both his bodies, he would never know which was true. Was he a copy? Was the Hugh that lived and loved Paul dead, and he was just living with stolen memories? Or was he that Hugh who had just been moved from one place to another without his body-mass data like some horrific transporter accident?

Did he even want to know?  Maybe they could track down his corpse for study.

Paul’s hands unfolded his own. He held both his hands in one of his, as he unzipped his uniform jacket. He drew a chain from over his head. It had Hugh’s ring on it. He placed the ring and chain into Hugh’s hand. “I did think about sending you off with it. But you never wore it on duty. It was always just for us. You died on duty, so I couldn’t give you to the universe with it on. Take it please.”

Hugh shook his head. “It’s not mine.”

“Yes, it is,” Paul crooned.

“You already buried your husband.”

“My husband is in front of me.”

“Then who’s in the casket?”

“Stop it!”

“When you die and get to heaven, will you have two husbands?”

“You know I don’t believe in heaven!”

“Fine, then it’ll just be us two Hugh’s bickering over who was actually married to you.”

“What the fuck?”

“I don’t know! Okay. Jesus Christ I don’t know. Shit, shit shit!” Hugh stood up shoving the table away, almost knocking Paul over. Hugh stalked a few steps but the room was too small, and he couldn’t get away. He dare not go into the ship’s corridor, there might be people who could witness his breakdown. 

Paul chased him, even across the tiny room.  Eventually, Hugh found himself sitting in a pile of sheets, wedged into the corner of the bulkhead. Paul sat next to him, quietly.

“I just keep circling around the thought of what would he think about all this,” Hugh said.

“Well, what do you think about it?” Paul asked.

“Stop.”

“No. There’s two options here, as you said: you could be a copy, in which case you have all Hugh’s thoughts and memories. Or you could just be the misplaced original, in which case you have all of Hugh’s thoughts and memories. So what do you think of all this?”

“This is a fucked up situation.”

“Yes, yes it is.”

“I’d want you to be happy.”

“Okay.”

“I’d want myself to be happy.”

“There you go. What?”

“I’m always going to have this disconnect. I’ll always be wondering, “do I think this because I think it, or because I’m programmed to from another man’s memories?” ”

Paul had one arm wrapped around his chest, with the other balanced on top. He rested his face in his free hand. “Will you hate me if I say I would rather have you like this than not at all?”

Hugh bumped his shoulder against him. “I could never hate you,” he said.

“How could you not? It’s my fault you’re this way. I sent you to that place without your body.”

“Yeah, that sucked.”

“So what do we do, now?”

“I don’t know,” Hugh said, even as his eyes lit upon his wedding ring, still on the chain, resting on the tabletop. From this angle he could see the chronometer in the corner of the replicator screen. “But I know you have to get back to work,” he added.

Paul looked up at the replicator as well. “No.”

“The ship needs you.”

“You need me.”

“Just please, go. I’ll be okay I promise. I just need to relax and figure this all out.”

“Hugh.”

“Paul. Please.”

It took several more rounds of “no, yes”, before Paul finally left Hugh alone in their ruined quarters.

He sat there in the debris for several minutes before he stood up. He grabbed the sheets he had been sitting on and tossed them into the replicator chamber. They were dirty with bits of shattered everything. While the computer made a new set, Hugh put everything that was still intact back in place. He had the computer send an order to the Quartermaster for a large-scale replication of the two nightstands because the drawers had been thrown so hard they shattered. The closet needed replacing as well when he broke the doors off their hinges. The replicator dinged with the completion. He withdrew the fresh hot sheets out of the machine and made the bed, fluffing the pillows and getting the sheet corners just right. 

When the room was as clean as it was going to get, while waiting for the replacement furniture, Hugh’s eyes again fell upon his ring, still on the chain, still on the table. He lifted it up gently with two fingers by the chain and let the ring dangle in front of his eyes for just a moment. Then he broke open the clasp and unthreaded the ring.

He slid his wedding ring onto his finger. It was heavy and thick and back where it belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes a fic is just words thrown upon a screen so that they'll finally stop circulating the mind.


End file.
